Re: Agenda for board meeting on September 26th

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Jeff Fortin <nekohayo gmail com> wrote:
...
> The board will be having its regular meeting this Friday at 16h UTC.
> Here is an overview of the agenda/topics for this meeting:
...
>   * Bountysource account for the Foundation
...

While Bountysource is interesting, I also think that we need to be
rather careful about adopting it. Two issues immediately spring to
mind:

1. How will this affect our community culture? On the one hand, I feel
that it is good for people to be able to earn money working on GNOME.
On the other hand, we have a lot of volunteers who contribute out of
principle or commitment. We should be sensitive to the prospect of
established contributors feeling resentful at newbies working only for
money, or the money distracting from our principles and values.

2. How will this affect our relationship with users? Let's say someone
spends some money to have a bug fixed. The bug gets fixed and the
money is paid to the developer who did the work. However, later, we
decide that we didn't like the fix, or that it gets in the way of a
bigger change we want to make. Suddenly we are in a tricky situation -
whoever paid for the fix will be (understandably) not too happy to
find out that it has been thrown out.

I hope that we will look at all the possible angles before pursuing
this. It would certainly be good to debate it.

Allan